Paradise County (15 page)

Alex guessed that Neely was already slipping and sloshing over the last remaining piece of ground: the farmhouse’s front yard.

Then she fell.

It was so sudden, so surprising, that she didn’t even have time to cry out. Her foot slipped and suddenly she was hurtling downward to land with jarring force on her back in the mud. Her head hit something hard, and for the second time that night she saw stars. For a moment she simply lay where she had landed, too stunned to move, at the mercy of the driving rain. The blanket had caught on something and been pulled from her as she went down; it now hung from the fence like a flag of surrender.

The rain stung her skin like thousands of icy bee stings. Her breasts, which had been protected by the blanket, were painfully exposed. She
rolled onto her stomach to shelter as much of her body as she could, and took stock.

She’d hit her head on the fence post nearest her, she realized as she glanced around. Two blows to the head in one night were too much for her system to cope with. She couldn’t even begin to get on her feet again right away. She was dizzy, shaken. The darkness seemed to tilt and sway around her. The raindrops danced and shimmied as they hit the waterlogged surface of the ground and bounced off. Telling herself that it was just for an instant, she closed her eyes, and rested her head on her folded arms.

A rhythmic sucking sound that rapidly increased in volume caused her to glance up again what could have been seconds or minutes later. Groggily she realized that she was still lying in the icy puddle of mud and water in which she had fallen, her back pelted by even colder rain. Her skin was numb; her arms—all of her body that she could see in her present position—looked corpse-white against the soaked earth. The smell of damp turf was everywhere, as overpowering as cheap perfume. Shielding her eyes with one hand, she focused with some difficulty on a man’s approaching boots. She identified them as the source of the sucking sound just as they splashed to a stop inches from her face. Even through the silvery veil of water she could see that they were huge, muddy… .

Terror goosed her numbed senses as memory returned. There’d been someone in her bedroom, in the house… .

She scrambled to her knees, heart pounding as she looked up through the curtains of rain at the tall dark form looming so menacingly over her.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, going swimming in a mud puddle?” Laced with equal parts anger and annoyance, it was a roar capable of being heard over the storm. Conversely, it filled Alex with relief. Instead of the homicidal maniac she had half expected, Welch stood in front of her, obnoxious and unpleasant as ever but a safe haven nonetheless. Water cascaded over him as brutally as if someone were standing above him with a hose pointed right at the top of his head and turned on full blast.

“I fell,” she replied even as he reached down, grasping her upper
arms with ungentle fingers and hauling her to her feet. Her knees quivered a protest, her head swam, and Alex sagged against him, clutching the wet flannel of his shirt in both hands, grateful to have something to lean on. Her head tipped forward instinctively to protect her face from the rain and her forehead ended up resting against the bony notch at the base of his neck. His shirt was only partially buttoned, she discovered. As she turned her head she could feel the crisp texture of his chest hair beneath her cheek. He smelled faintly of strong soap and wet cloth. Washed by the rain, his skin was cold to the touch. But the muscles beneath were reassuringly firm, and he felt big and solid and strong enough to take on all comers. Alex hadn’t realized just how scared she had been until the fear left her. Welch might dislike her, but he would keep her safe. “There was someone in the house… .”

“Save it!” They were shouting at each other, or at least he was shouting. Her voice sounded far weaker to her own ears and she doubted that he could understand a word she said. Before she realized what he meant to do he moved, one arm coming around her shoulders and the other sliding beneath her knees, scooping her up in his arms. Turning with her, carrying her as easily as if she weighed no more than a child, he headed for his house, his long strides eating up the ground, his head and shoulders hunched protectively over her to, she thought, shield her from the rain as best he could. A little embarrassed to accept such a rescue, Alex nevertheless surrendered to necessity and clung, wrapping her arms around his neck.

Twelve

P
eople crowded the open doorway. The darkness revealed no more of them than shadowy shapes and pale, watching faces as Welch carried her with swift efficiency up the steps to the covered porch. Just getting out of the reach of the stinging pellets of rain felt wonderful. Alex sagged with relief in Welch’s arms. A bright beam of light played over her: at least one of the clustered group held a flashlight. Glancing down, Alex was suddenly conscious of the sodden nightgown she wore. The thin wet silk clung to her body like milky cling-wrap. Her nipples, hard and puckered with cold, were plainly visible through the cloth; so, too, was every other inch of her anatomy. If it had not been for the darkness, she would have been indecent.

“Keep the light pointed down,” Welch said to whoever was holding it, earning her undying gratitude as the beam dropped away. The group fell back before them as he carried her inside the house. Her head, feeling too heavy now for her neck to support it, rested against his broad shoulder. She was freezing cold, light-headed, nauseated. If he had not come for her, she was not sure that she would have been able to get up off the ground and make it to the safety of the house on her own.

She owed him one.

“Alex, are you all right?” It was Neely, pushing past the others to lay a hand on her sister’s arm. Neely’s teeth were chattering; her words were punctuated by tiny clattering sounds. Alex was so cold that she could barely feel Neely’s almost equally cold fingers. “What happened? I thought you were right behind me.”

“I slipped and fell climbing over the fence. I’m all right. Just cold.” Her voice was weaker than normal and her teeth chattered audibly too. The warmth of the house enveloped her like an embrace, but it was not enough: she was shivering violently in Welch’s arms. He was holding her close to his chest still, as he had to protect her from the rain. Her body pressed against his almost greedily. Her breasts and belly and thighs had turned in toward him like a flower turns toward the sun, seeking to absorb some of the heat that their contact generated. But with Neely’s gaze on them, and the others looking at them too, she suddenly awakened to the embarrassment potential of her position. She stirred in his arms, asking without words to be put down. He obliged, but one arm still curved around her waist to provide support. The arm was dripping wet, hard with muscle, and welcome.

Alex’s head swam alarmingly as her shoes touched the floor amid a torrent of water that poured rather than dripped off both of them. Her knees threatened to buckle, and she swayed. Grabbing handfuls of soaking wet shirt for support, she leaned heavily against Welch as the closest solid object.

“Okay?” he asked.

Before she could answer, the flashlight beam hit Alex full in the face. She winced, shutting her eyes. His arm tightened around her, pulling her fully against him, as one of his hands lifted to block the light from her face.

“Josh, I told you to keep that thing pointed down.” Welch’s voice was sharp.

“Sorry.” It was a young male voice. Alex remembered the scalped teenager from the barn, and deduced that the people clustered around them were Welch’s children, plus Neely. Something furry brushed against her ankles. Shifting her feet, startled, she glanced down to discover a small, fat dog sniffing around her shoes.

“She fell in the house, too. Maybe she’s really hurt.” Neely was close on Alex’s other side, talking worriedly to Welch. Alex turned her head. Her cheek rested against the cold wet flannel covering Welch’s chest. She could hear the steady beat of his heart. Neely was deep in shadow, although the multiple flashlight beams now swooping hither and yon allowed Alex a fleeting glimpse of wet hair straggling down on either side of her sister’s wide-eyed, rain-washed face.

“You guys have more than one flashlight, right?” Welch asked the assembled group.

“We’ve got three.” The speaker was another young male, taller and older sounding than the first.

“Give me one.”

A flashlight changed hands, its beam flashing across the ceiling as Welch took possession from one of his sons. Then, to Alex’s surprise, he scooped her up into his arms again without a word and started walking away with her into the dark interior of the house.

“There’s no need … ,” she protested, grabbing on to his neck for dear life. Being swept up so suddenly made her dizzy. She broke off without finishing, her head dropping out of necessity to rest against his shoulder until the world had a chance to settle down around her. Whatever his faults, the man was strong as an ox, she thought, and she found that suddenly very comforting.

“I think there is,” he said, as if his opinion was the only one that mattered. Ordinarily such cool self-assurance would have annoyed her, but under the circumstances she was willing to permit her opinion to be disregarded. He carried her up the stairs into the utter blackness that was the second floor, issuing orders over his shoulder all the way. “Eli, get those camping lanterns out from under the sink. Josh, go round up some extra towels. Look in the dryer, I put a load in before we went to bed. Jen, you show Neely to your guys’ bathroom. Make sure they have a lantern in there, Eli, and bring a lantern and some towels to my bedroom.”

A chorus of assents followed them up the stairs. Alex was surprised not to hear the kind of crisp
yessirs
that normally were accompanied by military salutes.

Welch turned left at the top, walking briskly along a narrow corridor. His heavy boots made squelching sounds with every step, and Alex was reminded that he was just as wet and probably just as cold as she was.

Autocratic as he undoubtedly was, he
had
come to her rescue at the expense of his own comfort, and she appreciated that.

“Is your telephone working?” Her teeth chattered. She could not stop shivering. The faint warmth generated by her contact with his body and the greater warmth of the house did nothing to ease her bone-deep chill. Despite her physical discomfort, though, the situation she had left behind at Whistledown required immediate attention. “You need to call the fire department. And the police as well. Neely and I smelled smoke, and—and there was someone in the house.”

“So your sister said when she came banging on the door.” Welch sounded unimpressed as he turned into a doorway at the end of the hall, crossed a bedroom, and entered a white-tiled bathroom. By the light of the bobbing flashlight she saw that it was compact, with utilitarian fixtures and a large, glass-enclosed shower stall instead of a tub. “Okay, hold on. I’m going to put you down.”

He set her on her feet again, keeping a careful arm around her waist as he put the flashlight down on the back of the toilet tank, positioning it next to a box of tissues so that it wouldn’t roll. Thus situated, the small light provided an adequate degree of illumination, although the corners of the room and the ceiling remained shadowy and dark. Water dripped with an audible patter from her body and his to form a muddy puddle on the floor. He was dressed in the same red and gray plaid shirt he had worn earlier, plus jeans and boots, she saw. All were soaked, and his shirt and boots were caked with mud. She was in an equally sorry state. Long streaks of mud discolored her nightgown and smeared her arms and probably her face as well. Her shoes were mud-caked too. The nightgown itself was plastered against her breasts and stomach and wrapped around her legs, revealing every intimate detail of her slender body: her B-cup breasts with their cold-hardened nipples, her belly button, the dark triangle between her thighs. Mortified by her near nakedness, she instinctively turned away to keep him from getting a full frontal view.

“Steady, now,” he said, for all the world as if she were a fidgety horse. His hand rode her hipbone as she moved. It was a big hand, long fingered and warm enough now to be felt through the almost nonexistent barrier of the wet silk. His fingertips dug lightly into her flesh.

“I’m okay.” But she wasn’t. Moving so quickly had been a mistake, she discovered. She felt dizzy and sick, and her knees threatened to give way. She staggered slightly as she took another step away from him. His arm contracted, reeling her in like a fish, pulling her against him. Head spinning, giving up the effort to stand alone for the moment, she subsided once more against his wide chest.

“Looks like it.” His voice was dry. Holding her securely against him with one arm, he reached out with the other to turn on the taps of the shower.

“You need to call the fire department,” Alex insisted into his shirt-front. His body heat was reasserting itself even through his clammy clothes, and she pressed close instinctively while convulsive shivers continued to rack her body. The promise implicit in the rushing hot water no more than inches away was tantalizing. “And the police.”